Women Hugely Underrepresented at Top of Largest U.S. Companies

Women still have a long way to go before reaching anything close to equal numbers with men in corporate boardrooms or CEO offices.

At the top 500 companies in the U.S., women this year accounted for about 14% of executive officer positions and 16.6% of board seats, according to the research organization Catalyst.

“Adding insult to injury, an even smaller percent of those female executive officers are counted among the highest earners—less than 8 percent of the top earner positions were held by women,” wrote Bryce Covert at The Nation.

Catalyst also found that 25% of all Fortune 500 companies had no women executive officers, and 10% had no women directors on their boards.

This year marked the seventh consecutive year that the number of women on corporate boards remained the same, and the third straight year that the total of female executive officers did not increase either.